If you’d like to cast your vote on a possible SIOP name change, you’d better hurry! Voting for the first round ends October 30!

The vote on whether to change SIOP’s name is composed of two steps:

1. Decide on an alternative name:First, members will take part in a vote between three popular alternative names to SIOP. This vote will continue through October 30.
2. Vote between the alternative and SIOP: Second, members will take part in the name change vote between the winner of the first vote and the current name. This final vote will take place December 4 through January 4.

After consideration of proposed alternatives and previous internal discussions, the board decided on three alternatives to be included in this first vote:

The Society for Organizational Psychology (TSOP)
Society for Work Psychology (SWP)
Society for Work and Organizational Psychology (SWOP)

SIOP voting members have received an e-mail detailing how to cast their ballots, and voting is currently being held online. Votes should be cast on SIOP’s voting site here.

SIOP’s 5th Annual Leading Edge Consortium, “Leading Edge of Selection and Assessment in a Global Setting,” took place at the Hyatt Regency Tech Center October 16 and 17, where LEC Chair Lois Tetrick and Co-chairs Ann Marie Ryan and Tanya Delany led the consortium.

SIOP President Kurt Kraiger announced the topic of next year’s Leading Edge Consortium, “Developing and Enhancing High-Performance Teams,” which will take place October 22-23, 2010 in Tampa, FL. SIOP members Deb Cohen and Scott Tannenbaum will co-chair the 6th Annual Leading Edge Consortium.

In case you missed it, you can view photos of this year’s consortium now on the SIOP Exchange. You can also preorder the LEC 2009 DVD on the SIOP bookstore here.

Two focal articles have been accepted for Volume 3, Issue 2 of SIOP’s journal, Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice. They are now available for comment on the SIOP Web site.

The deadline for submissions is November 20, 2009.

The first focal article for this issue is by Cary Cherniss, titled “Emotional Intelligence: Towards Clarification of a Concept.” The second article is by Adam W. Meade and Scott Tonidandel, titled “Not Seeing Clearly With Cleary: What Test Bias Analyses Do and Do Not Tell Us.”

The focal articles can be downloaded by clicking on the Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice link in the publications dropdown menu of the SIOP Web site, www.siop.org. The journal page also contains details on the process of preparing and submitting a commentary. Please contact the editor, Cindy McCauley, at mccauley@ccl.org with any questions about the commentary process.

As human resources departments around the world continue to feel pressure to demonstrate their value to companies’ bottom lines, a new SIOP book contains information to help make those departments become strategic.

Strategy-Driven Talent Management: A Leadership Imperative, the newest edition to SIOP’s Professional Practice series, edited by SIOP members Rob Silzer and Ben E. Dowell, contains more than 800 pages of research, trends, and other information on the growing phenomena of strategy-driven talent management.

Strategy-Driven Talent Management is now available for preorder in the SIOP bookstore. You can view the book’s Table of Contents here and the book cover here.

SIOP wants to better understand our members’ course and continuing education (CE) needs so that we can maximize the use of our offerings, both during the conferences (workshops, seminars, master tutorials) and outside of the conferences (Online Learning Center, partnering with local I-O organizations). We want to identify who needs courses/CE, how members use them, what content is needed, and logistical opportunities (delivery method, cost, timing, etc). We also want to make sure that we meet the broader needs of our members.

We realize that not all of our members need the CE credits that accompany these learning opportunities. Even if you do not utilize continuing education, we want to hear your feedback on how we can meet your professional development needs through workshops, seminars, and potential online offerings.

Look out for an e-mail from SIOP detailing how you can participate in this survey!

In response to a need for more practitioner-based career development and learning opportunities resulting from the October 2008 Practitioner Needs Survey, the SIOP Professional Practice Committee is in the process of researching and designing a practitioner-based mentoring program within SIOP.

The team working on this project includes SIOP members Van Latham, Heather Prather, and Mark Poteet. The intent of this mentoring program is to provide members from all specialties and at all levels of experience the opportunity to grow their skills, expand their network, build relationships, and increase their knowledge base of practitioner-related issues, topics, and areas. As part of this project, the committee is conducting a needs assessment to determine users’ preferences, goals, and desired outcomes of the program. To expedite data collection, all practitioners at any level of experience are invited to respond to a short questionnaire designed to gather this needs assessment data.

Practitionerscan submit their questionnaires between Wednesday, October 28 and Thursday, November 12. The questionnaire can be completed here.

Please note that your responses will be kept anonymous and reported in aggregate form. If you have any questions or need more information, please contact Mark Poteet at mlpoteet@verizon.net.